Why Mojang and Steam don't get on

Minecraft, one of the most popular PC games of recent years, has yet to launch on Steam due to a conflict of interests over DLC terms, the game’s creator has said.

Markus Persson has been unremitting in his admiration of Valve’s digital channel, but said current platform restrictions would negatively impact on Minecraft if it was released on Steam.

“Steam is the best digital distribution platform I’ve ever seen,” Persson said on his personal blog.Yet he explained that launching Minecraft on Steam “limits a lot of what we’re allowed to do with the game, and how we’re allowed to talk to our users”.

“We (probably?) wouldn’t be able to, say, sell capes or have a map marketplace on minecraft.net that works with Steam customers in a way that keeps Valve happy,” he said. “It would effectively split the Minecraft community into two parts, where only some of the players can access all of the weird content we want to add to the game.”

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